Today we received two wonderful cards. One from China it was of the Giant Panda’s. WangLi explained on the back of the card how to write ‘Giant Panda’ in Chinese characters, which was really cool! Today I want to try and encourage the children to write it themselves in the Chinese characters – Maybe if they see me trying they will attempt it themselves! – If they do I shall be sure to add their attempts here…

This card travelled 8,616 Kilometres over 11 days to land in our mail box!

Giant Panda's - China

The second postcard we received was from Cindy in Taiwan. It shows the ‘Cave of the eight immortals’. This is a very interesting place and yet information was not easy to find for us.

We did however learn the following after reading on the following website – www.taiwan.com.au

Basiandong is located in the north of Huatung Mountain by the coast of Changbin Township. “Basian”, or the Eight Immortals, are famous Chinese deities. Fogs drift perpetually around the caves and the interior is damp and misty. As the environment resembles that in the folklore when the eight deities cross the ocean, the caves were named Basian. In the caves, Taiwan’s first prehistoric site was discovered. As the earth’s crusts elevated, the mountains were constantly eroded by the sea and 16 caves of different sizes were formed along the cliff as high as 100 meters

For more information about this interesting place please visit www.taiwan.com.au

Well since the start of December we have been rather quiet on the home front where homeschooling is concerned.

We had all agreed that our formal bookwork would cease on the 1st of December this year. This effectively means that I have to be a little smarter in my thinking when it comes to doing this, so that the children are having fun, but still learning along the way – which as we all know, learning never stops even when the books are packed away.

Having no formal book work means we have a better opportunity to do some fun things. So far we have done a lot of research about the places depicted on the postcards we have been sending overseas to others, so that we can write something of interest on the cards for the receiver to read. We have also been busy researching the places and animals depicted on the postcards we receive so we can learn a little more about those postcards too!

This is proving to be a fun adventure and not knowing where the next post card will come from is at times just as exciting as receiving the card itself! When the cards arrive and after we have researched them, we stick them up onto our door in the computer room, around and underneath a map of the world for everyone to see.